San Francisco, CA - This blog post may as well be called 'This Thursday in Fanta Events' because your 4th favorite day of the week is stacked with events to tide you over until the weekend comes. Kick it off in San Francisco with the men of Zap Comix as we continue to celebrate the release of The Complete Zap Comix Collection, a physical and emotional undertaking that is beautiful to behold. Join Gary Groth and Ron Turner of Last Gasp as they moderate a dicussion with Zap cartoonists Paul Mavrides, Victor Moscoso, and Robert Williams at City Lights Booksellers beginning at 7 pm. This very-nearly sold out book will be available for purchase and signage at City Lights (just don't try to carry it home in your NPR tote bag.) (More Details)

New York, NY - Humans can be split into two ages; a time where we communicated with pictures, and a time where we communicated with words. The blending of these worlds comes in the form of visual poetry, a fully immersive brain exercise in the conveyance of emotions, ideas, and beauty. The Future is Here Again is an exhibit opening today at AC Institute in NYC, and it will feature dozens of works by noted visual poetry artists whose works had been previously collected in the books Coldfront and The Last Vispo. Niko Vasilakis, editor of The Last Vispo has currated this new exhibit with ACI director, Holly Crawford. To continue this night of magnetic mashups, the alternative chamber music string trio, Speed Bump will be providing mingling music. Festivities begin at 6 pm! (More Details)

Washington, D.C. - Obama did a pretty good job delivering his State of the Union address this past week, but he had one glaring oversight, he forgot to talk about how the Massive team will be at Fantom Comics this Thursday from 7-9 pm! The biggest and sexiest gay manga anthology is coming to our nation's capitol to announce their new policy on having a good time, and dropping some knowledge about the men who make gay erotic manga. Addressing their adoring constituents are editors Anne Ishii,Graham Kolbeins, and designer extrodinare Chip Kidd. Pick up one of the hottest books of the season tonight, because it'll be on next years comic citizenship tests. (More Details)

The party you've been waiting your whole lifetime is here! On Thursday, January 22nd join Victor Moscoso, Robert Williams and Paul Mavrides at City Lights in San Francisco. They'll be in discussion with Gary Groth and Ron Turner (of Last Gasp) about The Complete Zap Comix.These legends start talking at 7pm on the dot, be there five minutes early if you need a smoke break. This nearly sold-out collection will be yours for the buying, theirs for the signing and for your family to argue about who will carry it home.

In 1968, when underground comics were just strating to emerge, Robert Crumb's released his classic solo first issue of Zap. By the second issue, he had assembled a Seven Samurai of the best, the fiercest, and the most stylistically diversified cartoonists to come out of the countercultural kiln. Together they created a mind-blowing anthology of abstract hallucination, throat-slashing social satire, and shocking sexual excess, that made possible the ongoing wave of alternative cartoonists like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Charles Burns. The Complete Zap Comix collects every issue of Zap - every cover and every story, and even the Zam mini comic jam among the Zap artists - in a multi-volume, slipcased hardcover set. It will also include the 17th unpublished issue with work by Crumb, Moscoco, Wilson, Rodriguez, Shelton, Mavrides, and Williams.

"While the early issues stand as rowdy documents of the 1960s counterculture, Zap was also more. In reinventing the comic book, it set off legal battles and conversations over censorship, brought attention to cartoonists as artists, and set an example for generations of alternative comics creators like Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Joe Matt and the Hernandez Brothers." -Dana Jennings, The NY TimesCity Lights Booksellers261 Columbus Avenue at BroadwaySan Francisco, CA 94133

Don't miss the wild party at Fantagraphics Bookstore this Saturday, December 13 as legendary artist Robert Williams unveils the Complete Zap Comix with an exhibition, book signing and reception from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. Join us as we commemorate the 8th anniversary of the bookstore with another memorable holiday gala.

From the time it first appeared in 1968 - peddled from a baby carriage on the streets of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district - R. Crumb's perversely perceptive observations altered the course of American counterculture. Crumb was soon joined by Robert Williams, Gilbert Shelton, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson, and Paul Mavrides. The Complete Zap Comix includes all prior issues plus the previously unpublished 17th issue. A limited number of this sold-out set will be available for sale, along with other subversive publications by Zap artists.

This event coincides with the festive holiday edition of the Georgetown Art Attack, featuring visual and performing arts presentations throughout the historic arts community. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is located at 1201 S. Vale Street (at the corner of Airport Way S.) just minutes from downtown Seattle. Open daily 11:30 to 8:00 PM, Sundays until 5:00 PM. Phone 206.658.0110.

Join us again on Sunday, December 14 at 4:00 PM for the Northwest premiere of Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin' at Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Avenue on Capitol Hill. This entertaining documentary examines the fascinating career of this influential artist. Williams will introduce the film and answer questions following the screening. See you all this weekend.

This week's comic shop shipment is slated to include the following new titles. Read on to see what comics-blog commentators and web-savvy comic shops are saying about them (more to be added as they appear), check out our previews at the links, and contact your local shop to confirm availability.

"The level of drawing in these erotic fantasies is extremely high, sometimes rivaling the work of the iconic Western porno artist Tom of Finland...The content of the stories in Massive is completely unlike the feathery romanticism of yaoi manga and anime. Rough, even sadistic sex takes the place of wistful longing." -Charles Solomon, IndieWire

"The Late Child is a rich and intelligent work, one of the lushest and most giving graphic novels in recent memory." -Jason Sacks, Comics Bulletin

"Marguerite's partner on these books as well as in life, Romberger, leaves his ink drawings open enough for her watercolors to capture various types of natural light during the day…It is a significantly gentler and more pastoral book, traditionally beautiful. Calling 7 Miles a Second "beautiful" would lead to smirking inwardly while waiting to be challenged; the book carries ugliness inside itself as part of its very being. While that book's language pushed forward with velocity and free association, this one places each considered thought into a caption to ring out poetically."–Brian Nicholson, Bookslut

"While the early issues stand as rowdy documents of the 1960s counterculture, Zap was also more. In reinventing the comic book, it set off legal battles and conversations over censorship, brought attention to cartoonists as artists, and set an example for generations of alternative comics creators like Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Joe Matt and the Hernandez Brothers." –Dana Jennings, The NY Times

"The Zapatistas were a sort of 'supergroup'-the dharma warriors of comics. Inkslingers. Revolutionaries. The best of the best. Their only yardsticks for comparison were each other and that sort of fraternal competition raised the bar and kept their art constantly evolving and their social satire razor sharp." –Richard Metzger, Dangerous Minds

"Max's latest graphic novel translated by Fantagraphics purifies and condenses his cartooning and thinking. Vapor charts the struggles and strange encounters of Nicodemos, a long-haired, long-nosed monk, who has quit the ‘gigantic muddle' of the world to seek transcendence in a desert through self-deprivations." –Paul Gravett

"The Nancy books are beautiful, and that work is such that it will be pulled from shelves and re-examined years after other collections, ostensibly more exciting this very minute, have worked their way to the sales box." –Tom Spurgeon, Comics Reporter

"Have you ever taken the time to read and devour Ernie Bushmiller's masterpiece Nancy. Deceptibly simple and oddly corny, it is surprisingly funny and a virtual textbook on comic storytelling." –Andy Mansell, Heroes Online

"Carré's work, fittingly titled Heads or Tails, probes choice, ambivalence and fate; in her stories, there's a flip side to everything, rendered in full and brilliant colour." -Laura Kane, The Toronto Star

From the time it first appeared in 1968 - peddled from a baby carriage on the streets of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury district - R. Crumb's perversely perceptive observations in Zap altered the course of American counterculture. The Zap Comix collective came to include eight creative misfits, as Crumb was joined by Robert Williams, Gilbert Shelton, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson, and Paul Mavrides. Over the course of three and-a-half decades they produced 16 issues on an intermittent schedule. The Complete Zap Comix Anthology will include all prior issues plus the previously unpublished #17 and a fascinating oral history of Zap by underground comix scholar Patrick Rosenkranz. A special, limited edition of the anthology will include a portfolio of signed prints from the pages of Zap. The exhibition at Fantagraphics Bookstore will feature prints, posters, drawings and related ephemera from these master cartoonists.

Robert Williams emerged on the American art scene in 1965 as a designer for notorious hot rod celebrity Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. In addition to his later work on Zap and other underground comix, Williams has enjoyed a successful career as a fine artist. His work was featured in MoCA's landmark "Helter Skelter" exhibition in 1992 and the travelling "Kustom Kulture" show, which appeared at Seattle's Center on Contemporary Art in 1994. His paintings have since been exhibited in prestigious galleries and museums worldwide. Fantagraphics Books has published three volumes of Williams work including Malicious Resplendence, Hysteria in Remission, and Conceptual Realism. Williams will sign copies of these and other books at the reception on December 13 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM, which marks the 8th anniversary of Fantagraphics Bookstore. This event also coincides with the colorful holiday edition of the Georgetown Art Attack.

On Sunday, December 14 at 4:00 PM, Fantagraphics Books co-hosts the Seattle premiere of Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin' at Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Avenue on Capitol Hill. This wildly entertaining documentary, directed by Mary Reese and Nancye Ferguson, chronicles the career of this incredibly influential artist. Williams will introduce the movie and answer questions following the screening.

On Thursday, December 18, at 7:00 PM, editor J. Michael Catron will give a slide presentation on the history of Zap Comix and its lasting cultural implications. The festivities will conclude on Saturday, December 20 from 4:00 to 6:00 PM with a Tribute to S. Clay Wilson featuring Patrick Rosenkranz, Dennis Dread and Jim Blanchard. Rosenkranz will sign copies of The Mythology of S. Clay Wilson: Pirates in the Heartland. Dennis Dread will present Entartete Kunts, a collection of contemporary cartoonists and illustrators influenced by the Wilson's work, including Seattle artist Jim Blanchard.

There scarcely was an underground comics world before Robert Crumb's classic solo first issue of Zap in 1968. By Zap #2, he had begun assembling a Seven Samurai of the best, the fiercest, and the most stylistically diversified cartoonists to come out of the countercultural kiln. All of them were extremists of one sort or another, from biker-gang member Rodriguez to Christian surfer Griffin, but somehow they produced a decades-long collaboration: a mind-blowing anthology of abstract hallucination, throat-slashing social satire, and shocking sexual excess, that made possible the ongoing wave of alternative cartoonists like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Charles Burns. The Complete Zap Comix collects every issue of Zap — every cover and every story, and even the Zam mini comic jam among the Zap artists — in a multi-volume, slipcased hardcover set. It will also include the 17th unpublished issue with work by Crumb, Moscoco, Wilson, Rodriguez, Shelton, Mavrides, and Williams. Plus, an introduction by founder R. Crumb and an oral history of Zap by Patrick Rosenkranz, and other exclusive bonus features and items TBA. Zap is the most historically and aesthetically important comics series ever published.

There scarcely was an underground comics world before Robert Crumb's classic solo first issue of Zap in 1968. By Zap #2, he had begun assembling a Seven Samurai of the best, the fiercest, and the most stylistically diversified cartoonists to come out of the countercultural kiln. All of them were extremists of one sort or another, from biker-gang member Rodriguez to Christian surfer Griffin, but somehow they produced a decades-long collaboration: a mind-blowing anthology of abstract hallucination, throat-slashing social satire, and shocking sexual excess, that made possible the ongoing wave of alternative cartoonists like Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, and Charles Burns. The Complete Zap Comix collects every issue of Zap — every cover and every story, and even the Zam mini comic jam among the Zap artists — in a multi-volume, slipcased hardcover set. It will also include the 17th unpublished issue with work by Crumb, Moscoco, Wilson, Rodriguez, Shelton, Mavrides, and Williams. Plus, an introduction by founder R. Crumb and an oral history of Zap by Patrick Rosenkranz, and other exclusive bonus features and items TBA. Zap is the most historically and aesthetically important comics series ever published.

"While the early issues stand as rowdy documents of the 1960s counterculture, Zap was also more. In reinventing the comic book, it set off legal battles and conversations over censorship, brought attention to cartoonists as artists, and set an example for generations of alternative comics creators like Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Joe Matt and the Hernandez Brothers." – Dana Jennings, The NY Times

"The portraits are a genuine insight and reflection of the person and their contribution. Special kudos to Drew for his careful research so that the bios are accurate and help to add to the ongoing study of how it all began in comics." – Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson, The Beat

"He doesn't just draw the funny or sexy moments -- he lets the characters and the readers enjoy and laugh, but then he shows the fallout from some of the characters' actions, depicting them as them scared and desperate, pathetic and troubled. Hanselmann's skill at depicting this range of emotions and exploring those consequences is what makes his work so fascinating and so worth rereading." – Alex Dueben, Comic Book Resources

Plug: "Any time a Carl Barks or Don Rosa book of Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge comics is released, I get all excited. Because they’re great! I’m not kidding! Also good for jaded fans too cool for kids’ comics." – Dan Greenfield, 13th Dimension

"This adorable little collection of strips is the perfect prize for your costume contest. Growing up, you may have gotten to know the Great Pumpkin mainly through the evergreen TV special — but the original strips collected here are both brainier and more emotionally complex than the show." – Etelka Lehoczky, NPR